Forum:Appearances lists
The appearances lists that we have at the bottom of episode and novel articles are great for finding out what was in that piece of media, however, I would like to propose that we split it into "appearances" and "mentions" as two separate sections. My reasoning: # The title "appearances", by definition, does not include mentions, as they did not "appear". # When I go to a section like Deadline#Appearances, there is hardly any visual distinction between "first appearance" in parentheses and "mentioned only", so just scrolling through the list it's really hard to tell the difference between a character who actually appeared in and was part of the events, and someone like Teri Bauer who happened to be mentioned once or twice and who died years before. # Similarly, in something like the location list of Day 9: 10:00pm-11:00am#Appearances, I would ideally like to be able to differentiate between locations that were part of the plot and the 200-odd countries that appeared on a map of the world. Do people generally agree?--Acer4666 (Talk) 15:07, January 29, 2017 (UTC) :Agree that it gets absurd in certain cases, but I also think it works well enough on others that a separate section maybe isn't the best way - how about if there are dozens of a certain qualifier we just put them into another sublist? We could do this for both all the mapped countries and all the one-off characters: *Characters **Andrew (only appearance) **Jack Bauer **Belcheck **Audrey Boudreau **Mark Boudreau **Cheng Zhi **Ron Clark **Adrian Cross (mentioned only) **Alastair Davies **Caroline Fowlds **James Heller **Gavin Leonard **Lydia (first appearance) **Marat (first appearance) **Kate Morgan **Nash **Chloe O'Brian **Pavel (first appearance) **Erik Ritter **Shaw **Jiao Sim **Snyder **Anatol Stolnavich (corpse only) **Wei **(Audrey's security agent 1) (corpse only) **(Audrey's security agent 2) (corpse only) **(Cheng's sniper) (first appearance) **(Cheng's technician) **(Cheng's thug) **(''Letitcia'' captain) (first appearance) **(Russian agent) (first appearance) **(Secret Service agent) *Locations **Asia **Atlantic Ocean **Beijing **CIA London station **England **Greenwich (mentioned only) **Knightsbridge **Lankenheath (mentioned only) **London **London Heathrow Airport (mentioned only) **Malden Park **Millswood **Moscow (mentioned only) **People's Republic of China **River Thames **Southampton (first appearance) **Southampton Docks (first appearance) **United Kingdom **Map only ***Afghanistan ***Africa ***Aguni Island ***Alaska ***Albania ***Algeria ***Angola ***Antarctic Circle ***Arctic Circle ***Argentina ***Armenia ***Aruba ***Australia ***Austria ***Azerbaijan ***Bali ***Bangladesh ***Belarus ***Belgium ***Belize ***Benin ***Bolivia ***Botswana ***Boznia and Herzegovina ***Brazil ***Brunei ***Bulgaria ***Burkina Faso ***Burma ***Cambodia ***Cameroon ***Camp Courtney ***Camp Foster ***Camp Gonsalves ***Camp McTureous ***Camp Schwab ***Canada ***Cayman Islands ***Central African Republic ***Chad ***Chile ***Colombia ***Congo ***Corsica ***Costa Rica ***Covent Garden ***Croatia ***Cuba ***Cyprus ***Czech Republic ***Democratic Republic of Congo ***Denmark ***Dominican Republic ***East China Sea ***East Timor ***Ecuador ***Egypt ***El Salvador ***Equatorial Guinea ***Eritrea ***Estonia ***Ethiopia ***Europe ***Falkland Islands ***Finland ***France ***French Guiana ***Futenma Air Base ***Gabon ***Georgia ***Germany ***Ghana ***Greece ***Greenland ***Guatemala ***Guinea-Bissau ***Guyana ***Haiti ***Hamahiga Island ***Henza Island ***Hungary ***Hawaii ***Iceland ***Ie Island ***Ikei Island ***India ***Indian Ocean ***Indonesia ***Iran ***Iraq ***Ireland ***Israel ***Italy ***Ivory Coast ***Jamaica ***Japan ***Jordan ***Kadena Air Base ***Kaukistan ***Kazakhstan ***Kenya ***Kinbu Bay ***Kosovo ***Kouri Island ***Kume Island ***Kyrgyzstan ***Laos ***Latvia ***Lebanon ***Lesotho ***Liberia ***Libya ***Lithuania ***Luxembourg ***Macedonia ***Madagascar ***Malawi ***Malaysia ***Mali ***Malta ***Marine Corps Air Station Futenma ***Mauritania ***Mexico ***Miyagi Island ***Moldova ***Mongolia ***Morocco ***Mozambique ***Namibia ***Nepal ***Netherlands ***New Zealand ***Nicaragua ***Nigeria ***Niger ***North America ***North Korea ***Northern Ireland ***Norway ***Ojima Island ***Okinawa ***Oman ***Pacific Ocean ***Pakistan ***Panama ***Papua New Guinea ***Paraguay ***Peru ***Philippines ***Poland ***Portugal ***Puerto Rico ***Romania ***Russian Federation ***São Tomé and Príncipe ***Sardicia ***Saudi Arabia ***Scotland ***Senegal ***Serbia ***Sesoko Island ***Sierra Leone ***Singapore ***Slovakia ***Slovenia ***Somalia ***South Africa ***South America ***South Korea ***Spain ***Sri Lanka ***Sudan ***Suriname ***Swaziland ***Sweden ***Switzerland ***Syria ***Taiwan ***Tajikistan ***Tanzania ***Thailand ***The Bahamas ***Togo ***Tonaki Island ***Tsukei Island ***Tunisia ***Turkey ***Turkmenistan ***Uganda ***Ukraine ***United States of America ***Uruguay ***Uzbekistan ***Venezuela ***Vietnam ***Wales ***White Beach ***Yagaji Island ***Yemen ***Zamami Island ***Zambia ***Zimbabwe *Organizations and titles **Admiral **Base Honor Guard (only appearance) **Central Intelligence Agency **Colonel **General **Politburo **President of the People's Republic of China **President of the United States **Prime Minister of the United Kingdom **United States Air Force **United States Army **United States Navy **United States Secret Service **United States Seventh Fleet **White House Chief of Staff *Objects **AgustaWestland 109 Power Elite (only appearance) **Air Force One **Boeing 737 **Defense override module (mentioned only) **Glock 17 **Heckler & Koch P30 **Helicopter **Katana (only appearance) **''Letitcia'' (only appearance) **Messenger bag **Nuclear football **Satellite (mentioned only) **''Shenyang'' (mentioned only) --Pyramidhead (talk) 20:53, February 1, 2017 (UTC) :::I don't think it even works on that Raid example - when I look at that list I think "when was Nicole Carter in Yemen?", then have to look very closely to work it out. The proposed solution above doesn't solve the problem, in that there are still mentioned character mixed in with ones that appeared. All of this is under an "appearances" header, so as I say mentioned characters technically shouldn't be there! I don't see what's wrong with a separate section if we want to list mentions--Acer4666 (Talk) 13:03, February 4, 2017 (UTC) ::::We could call it "References" or "Story elements" or something else - it's just to list all IU elements that have anything at all to do with the episode, not strictly what was physically present. Maybe I'm misunderstanding but you want to have two similarly structured lists, right? It seems like it would only really clean things up in cases where you have several dozen of one type that were mentioned or map only. Otherwise you have one list with a lot of items and another with maybe only two or three (example below). Also where do photographs and old video appearances go in that case? Neither of them count as "Appearances" by that definition. --Pyramidhead (talk) 04:57, February 5, 2017 (UTC) Appearances *Individuals **Eric Carter **Ben Grimes **Rebecca Ingram **Philman **Stewart **(Black Hawk pilot) **(Ranger support analysts) *Locations **Asia **Earth **Middle East **Yemen *Organizations **United States Army **United States Army Rangers *Titles **Lieutenant **Sergeant *Objects **Big Bird **Car **Computer **Gun **Helicopter **Rocket-propelled grenade **Telephone **Television **UH-60 Black Hawk Mentions *Individuals **Ibrahim Bin-Khalid (video) **Nicole Carter *Objects **AGM-114 Hellfire **DNA ::I've edited it to what I'm suggesting: we wouldn't list empty categories with nothing in them. I think it's a lot neater - and while you've picked a small example to illustrate above, which is true for the handful of prequels and things, the majority of these lists have much more in them. I've put a few, possibly more representative, examples here of a novel, episode and game. ::As for distinguishing between a mention/appearance, we already have set rules for this, which currently governs whether they go in Category%3AMentioned_characters or not, and whether they get an appearances template. Live video and audio is an "appearance", photos and archive video are "mentions". The splitting of the lists would reflect this structure that is already in place--Acer4666 (Talk) 10:07, February 5, 2017 (UTC) :::Looks a little better... I just don't know if both Appearances and Mentions should be their own sections under "Background information and notes" at the same tier as "Cast and crew", etc. if that makes sense. Maybe structured something like this would be better? --Pyramidhead (talk) 23:01, February 5, 2017 (UTC) *Background information and notes **Appearances ***Mentioned only ;or *Background information and notes **Links and references ***Appearances ***Mentions